


Unravelled

by Clementive



Series: Over Your Threads [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Established Relationship, F/M, Fantasy, Fate & Destiny, Fluffy Ending, Inspired by The Fates (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Old Gods, Opposites Attract, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26100361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementive/pseuds/Clementive
Summary: Konan shaped and built and spun the patterns of unravelled human fates, and Kakuzu brought chaos to them. He brought chaos to her.
Relationships: Kakuzu/Konan (Naruto)
Series: Over Your Threads [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1953706
Comments: 6
Kudos: 6
Collections: r/NarutoFanfiction Gift Exchange





	Unravelled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zombie_honeymoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombie_honeymoon/gifts).



> To zombie_honeymoon: This is a small treat. I hope you'll enjoy it! It's light and fluffy :))
> 
> This is inspired by the Fates from Greek mythology. Do I need to say more?

The mortal world rippled through the gate.

Kakuzu stepped through the portal first, and he stumbled forward, drenched and spinning. And the world ripped every time he stumbled. And the world spun when he spun. It paused, when he paused.

He finally stepped into a park, the scenery stiff and unmoving.

Grumbling, Kakuzu brushed off the beads of condensed air off his robes, narrowing his eyes at the stiffened strands of grass caught in sunlight. On his left, a couple picnicking on a blanket had frozen mid-laugh. A jogger had his head turned toward his dog.

Under the blazing sun, Kakuzu was the only who projected no shadow. He clicked his tongue. 

His skin quivered and hummed as he held up his hand for Konan.

Kakuzu impatiently turned his head back, waiting.

Through the gate, he could see her securing back strands of her blue hair with a pin. Meeting his gaze, she cocked her head on the side, amused, and stepped in. Her body shone in and out of oblivion, before solidifying and stilling once more.

The world tilted and dipped abruptly. Briefly, sounds of humanity echoed, then they all ceased.

Everything ceased.

Konan frowned, looking up at the sky. Birds were now frozen over the pond of the park, beaks stretched open, wings dipping in the water. They divided waves and ripples, breaking the surface of the water under the gleaming splatters suspended in the air. Utter chaos. Her robes rustled and folded above her knees. She let go of Kakuzu's hand.

"We're late," Konan told Kakuzu through pinched lips.

"You mean, you're late," Kakuzu replied calmly. "Things are chaotic, just as I like them." The shape of his mouth shifted between tight and full circles, lips curling back, caving in and out.

Tendrils of himself were unravelling, echoing the unravelling Fate they had come to weave back into its original form.

Kakuzu reached for her, thinking of a hundred ways to dishevel her hair, her clothes, her careful expression, but Konan avoided his touch.

Kakuzu chuckled, low in his throat, following her with his gaze. He would wait until later, then.

Konan spun on her heels, retracing her steps when she reached the end of the paved way between the trees. Frowning, she started walking between frozen humans looking for the unravelling threads of fate.

The world blinked and sped up as she went. Kakuzu grumbled, steeling himself. Every interference with the human world had ripple and uncomfortable effects.

Konan and Kazuku blurred and tumbled forward along with the world. 

When the motion stopped, they were pushed back, hard, on a bench overlooking the pond. A cyclist had frozen in front of them. The sun had set. The air had staled, gusts of wind frozen, resting uncomfortably against them. Kakuzu turned his head toward Konan, cracks forming where his skin was covered in thin ice.

In front of them, knotted red threads undulated, receding from red to pulsing black.

"Don't do that again," Kakuzu grunted, and ice burst, peeled off his face with each movement of his mouth.

Konan shrugged one shoulder, beads of frozen water entrapped in her light eyelashes.

He sighed deeply as she drew her needles from her robes.

"Let's get this over with."

Unmoved, Konan knitted the threads of fate fast, her hair falling in front of her face. She deftly rightened patterns, filling holes. Kakuzu groaned again, crossing his arms over his chest. His robes were drenched, sticking to his skin. 

"I don't know why you bother."

She pinched her lips, not bothering to answer. She was made of straight edges, robes cut in unwavering lines, unmoving, while his were twisted and ragged, constantly moving. Chaos and order. Mortal fate was balanced between chaos and order.

"Here."

Konan neatly folded the knitted pattern and held it up in front of him. She shook it when he didn't immediately reach for it.

He sighed and uncrossed his arms.

His skin detached, rip open, and hissing strings stretched hesitantly toward the pattern. They ate at it, weaving themselves in. The knitted threads moved, crooked in some places, and neat in others.

Calmly, Konan cast off the threads of fate, and the strings fell out of Kakuzu, screeching briefly before falling silent. Side-by-side, they watched as the pattern, glowing red and frizzled black, rolled back toward the frozen human in front of them. His skin gleamed, absorbing his fate.

Konan nodded satisfied, then turned toward Kakuzu.

"How many more do we have today?"

Kakuzu watched the falling sky reflected on the pond, his skin untouched by the sun. There was no visible cloud, but he couldn't help thinking about the Ancient World. He once yearned to be the god of thunder or the god of any of the five elements, but human fates had been tightly tangled in his skin the moment he was born. So, he had become Fate.

"Two," he finally answered.

He carried everyone's fate in his skin, in the marrow of his bone. They shifted with him. They lived inside him. He could never be free of them.

Konan stood up and held out her hand. He merely stared at it. She pulled back her hand, frowning, her eyes searching his.

"Normally, you aren't this annoyed," she said softly, and the earth grumbled loudly under their feet, breaking apart and mending back together.

"It has been thousands of years," Kakuzu sighed and stood up. "I think I'm allowed to feel like I would rather be human and be paid for my job."

"Old," she said with a small amused smile because she understood him better than he understood himself. "You feel old."

"You make me feel old," he said gruffly and laced his fingers with hers.

She was caught mid-laugh, her orange eyes tinkling.

They dissolved in thin air and the world rolled back into place at the park.

The chants of birds resumed.

The cyclist resumed his path. 

They started over. 

They had never stopped.

* * *

They travelled back.

They travelled forward.

They stopped in a crowded subway car, in semi-darkness, neon light buzzing. It was tilted forward toward an underground passage, shy from leaving the station behind. Kakuzu looked around, his skin hissing back at the bodies of frozen humans pressed against it. Each touch sent electrifying jolts in him, in the train, in the whining of wheels. Konan's grip on his hand had turned deadly. He could barely see her through the crowd.

Most of the humans were wearing suits or some sort of uniforms. In his thousand years of existence, Kakuzu had documented the earnings of humans and marvelled how they had shifted from earnings based on titles to earnings based on uniforms. Konan thought it was amusing that money fascinated him. As gods of Fate, they did not make fair transactions. Fate wasn't earned or deserved. Neither a compensation nor a gift, it was imposed.

Kakuzu carefully let go of Konan's hand to walk through the humans. The train abruptly inched forward and stopped, the ventilation intermittently rushing air in.

He gritted his teeth, his footing unsteady. His gaze searched the windows and sticky ground. He finally spotted the thread of fate trapped in the corner of the door leading to the other car. It pulsed, leaking red and black.

"Over here."

Konan gripped his wrist as he pushed through the humans. She didn't like to be this close to them. Her robes snapped, rolling out new neat folds over her exposed skin. Kakuzu felt her hand on his back as he forced the door open with his shoulder.

It screeched loudly.

The humans shifted briefly in a ripple effect and the subway leaped forward before stopping.

Konan panted loudly, glancing over her shoulder. The humans nearest her had half-turned toward her. Most humans could somehow sense divinity, and they were naturally attracted to it, seeking to possess it savagely.

"Let's go," Konan gulped and pushed Kakuzu gently forward.

Using his body as a shield, he twisted and pulled her in, so she could step in the passage without touching humans.

Closing her eyes, Konan leaned back against the rubbery concertinaed passage between the two cars. Kakuzu leaned in, carefully brushing off a strand of her hair. It curled up. The folds of her dress quivered and dropped, exposing once more her collar bone and her face.

He cupped her cheek. His own robes fell, untwisted, over his half-exposed chest and knees in a neat knot.

"I'm better," Konan said, pale, and smiled thinly against his palm.

Kakuzu nodded silently, watching her for a moment before dropping his hand. Beads of sweat had gathered at her hairline.

Shakily, Konan touched her hair until it was once more straight and neat. She glared at him pointedly. In answer, Kakuzu simply smirked and bent down. He pulled at the unravelling thread of fate before holding up in front of her face.

"After you."

Konan touched the single thread, and it multiplied, the mortal's Fate growing heavier, tangling itself between her and Kakuzu.

"What a mess," she sighed and started knitting the threads in a circle with circular needles.

The threads spun, settling back as the circle grew. Konan breathed out, relieved. She nudged Kakuzu. Grunting, he infused the pattern with his own strings, and Fate was decided.

"Ready?"

"Yes."

He pressed a quick kiss to her sweaty forehead, and they left the subway, connected and tangled.

The subway cried and left the station.

It had never stopped.

* * *

They jumped back and forth between dimensions until they stepped back into the mortal world, covered in beads of water. They burst and dripped violently at their feet.

They stood in the waiting room of the maternity ward at a hospital, water rolling off their skin before it disappeared.

Kakuzu narrowed his eyes at the frozen new parents around him.

"Children are a waste of financial resources for humans," he stated gruffly and shook his head.

"They can't be a total waste," Konan replied with a hint of amusement. "Reproduction makes it possible for us to keep our ' _job_ '," she added insisting on the human term as she walked past him to hunt for the unravelled thread of fate.

He frowned, following her with his eyes.

"I know you're mocking me, but I feel strongly about waste."

Konan stopped under the direction sign board hung from the ceiling. She glanced back at him curiously.

"How did you..." She stopped.

She struggled to explain it to herself, but she wondered if she was his spare. The wasteful Fate. The one who came after the original Fate.

"What?" Kakuzu pressed on.

Konan hesitated and her robes was tilted, chaotic. He stilled.

"How did I first appear to you?" she asked him softly.

He frowned.

"As a goddess."

Konan glanced away, and, distractedly, she smoothed back robes and hair in order. Her white skin had taken a yellow sickly tint under the neon lights. His darker tone was left unchanged. He would always be the most powerful god of the two, unaffected and unchanged by the human world.

"I know I am a goddess, this isn't what I'm asking."

Konan looked down, frowning, her lips tight. A flower bloomed in her hair. Her robes turned violet. The silence stretched. She sighed, rubbing at her temples.

"I asked for you," Kakuzu said slowly, "to make this more efficient. You're my partner, and we're efficient, no?"

Konan inhaled sharply before nodding briefly, solemnly. Her eyes shifted back to the room.

"It's not here."

In blurred edges, the humans bent forward and resumed walking, hurrying, and dying, then they stopped again.

Kakuzu and Konan know stood in a crowded delivery room, water and chunks of ice gathering at their feet.

Treads of fate were hanging out from the ceiling, splattered across the walls of the room. They steadily leaked off a young doctor with a clipboard, standing behind the nurse.

Konan took in the scene, her robes shifting and rearranging themselves across her body in one simple fold. She stepped forward, staring at the largest tangle of threads pulsing on the ceiling.

"I never thought you were a waste," Kakuzu said, watching her.

Konan startled, her eyes widening. The red of the threads of fate filled her vision. Haltingly, she turned her head back toward Kakuzu. He stood, ready, cut open, blacks strings hissing at the threads of fate above.

"Fate is meaningless without order, just as it is meaningless without chaos," he added stiffly, the strings of his body loosening with each word. "I never thought you needed to hear that. Otherwise, I'd have told you earlier."

They locked eyes under the loosened threads of fate, her breathing ragged, his, controlled. Chaos and order, balanced.

Kakuzu took his place by her side, grazing her hand.

Konan looked up, and so did he, mirroring her movements. Side-by-side, they were once more parallel twisting circles and sharp edges. They breathed more easily.

"This will take a while," Kakuzu observed flatly and crossed his arms.

"Good thing we have eternity," Konan smiled at him, soft and alit.

"One day, you'll feel old too," he groaned.

Konan started knitting, still smiling.

They were Fates, she told herself.

They were fated.

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments are appreciated! :) Stay safe, y'all!


End file.
